


Hatstand, Table, Chair

by okapi



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Banter, Forniphilia, Friends to Lovers, Human Furniture, Humor, It's For a Case, Kinktober 2017, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-04
Updated: 2017-10-04
Packaged: 2019-01-08 22:15:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12263133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okapi/pseuds/okapi
Summary: I am accustomed to returning to Baker Street and discovering strange goings-on, but coming home very late one evening to find Holmes had taken the place of our hatstand was, I will confess, a new one.Holmes/Watson. Friends to lovers. Banter & humour. Forniphilia for a case. Kinktober 2017 - Day Two.





	Hatstand, Table, Chair

**Author's Note:**

> Title and fic inspired by Allen Jones’ sculptures, [Hatstand, Table and Chair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatstand,_Table_and_Chair)  
> .  
> Canon references: “I’m here to be used, Holmes” is from “The Illustrious Client” and the cases are the untold cases mentioned are from “The Golden Pince-nez”: “As I turn over the pages I see my notes upon the repulsive story of the red leech and the terrible death of Crosby the banker. Here also I find an account of the Addleton tragedy and the singular contents of the ancient British barrow. The famous Smith-Mortimer succession case comes also within this period…” 
> 
> Saint Homobonus (San'Omobono in Italian) is the patron saint of tailors.
> 
> Written for Kinktober 2017 Day Two – Forniphilia

I am accustomed to returning to Baker Street and discovering strange goings-on. More than once after a long day at my medical practice, I have climbed the seventeen steps to the sitting room I share with Mister Sherlock Holmes only to be greeted by the malodorous fragrance of one of Holmes’s scientific investigations or the rapid appearance of the fire brigade in response to another gone horribly awry. Scenes of violence are also not unusual, such as Holmes deflecting a villainous attack with bartitsu techniques and single-stick expertise. I’ve been witness to tableaus of human suffering, too, such as a man collapsed from anxiety upon our hearth rug; not surprising in the least, for, after all, Holmes is a problem-solver by profession and those who sleep easily at night rarely have need of his services.

But coming home very late one evening to find Holmes had taken the place of our hatstand was, I will confess, a new one.

Holmes stood tall, still, solemn and silent, with eyes closed and hands out and upturned. Barefoot, he wore a heavy black dressing gown with black velvet lapels and black feather trim. The garment was new, or at least novel to me, and between it, his expression, and his posture, my companion resembled nothing so much as an enormous raven.

And if ravens can be like writing desks, why not like hatstands?

And lest my reader think that my powers of deduction have somehow outstripped those of the world’s greatest detective or that I am some sort of charades savant, I only knew that he was a handstand and not, say, practising an unusually costumed form of Eastern meditation or unusually sedate form of Swedish exercise, because of the card in his right palm.

Addressed to me.

_Dear Watson,_

_Do not be alarmed. I am endeavouring to get to the bottom of the Addleton tragedy by putting myself, body and mind, in the place of the hatstand that was found in the ancient British barrow. Pray do not alter your behaviour or custom. Indeed, I should be grateful and find it useful if you would treat me as a hatstand._

_Yours,_

_Holmes_

Well, if a man I respect, admire, and, yes, let’s not be coy, adore, wants to be treated as a hatstand and I’ve got a hat on me, why not, I say? I also had a walking stick, which I carry when I go about visiting patients after dark. And a coat.

And in a few moments, all three were hanging from Holmes’s hands and wrist.

He didn’t move. He didn’t open his eyes. He didn’t sway.

I studied the dressing gown. It really was a fantastic raiment, dramatic to the point of macabre, and further proof, if one was needed, that Holmes’s tailor was the only man in London more tolerant of his whims than I was. I had the sudden urge to run my fingers along the smooth velvet and feel for myself the softness of the plumage.

But I refrained.

After a long caressing stare, I wrenched my eyes from the garment and sighed a normal end-of-a-long-day sigh and fixed myself a normal whiskey and soda. Then I stoked the normal hearth fire, took up the normal stack of evening papers from their normal spot on the table, sat in my normal armchair, and began to read, normally.

And would you believe I absolutely forgot Holmes was there?

I didn’t even say good night! To the man or the hatstand!

The slight lay heavy on me as I descended the stairs the next morning and I was prepared to offer a sincere and lengthy apology, but Mrs. Hudson informed me that Holmes had already gone out, so I shrugged it off and dug into the hearty breakfast feast before me.

I had just laid waste to two servings of Mrs. Hudson’s finest kippers when Holmes appeared with a Thames-wide grin that told me everything I needed to know:

Nothing to forgive as the clever bastard had solved the case!

* * *

“Thank you for your assistance with the case, Watson.”

“I’m here to be used. Or rather, you are, as a hatstand.”

“It was an interesting exercise, both in terms of insight into the case and the challenge of concentrating one’s mental faculties whilst fighting one’s physical needs. Should I employ it again, you may take the liberty of further inference, such as kicking me, hitting me, or spitting on me. I should like to see just how far body and mind might be pushed.”

“Kicking you? Hitting you? Spitting on you? Goodness, Holmes, I am not in the habit of abusing the furnishings and I shan’t start now just to indulge you!”

He smirked. “As you wish.”

“But that dressing gown, now that was pushing the sartorial limit of something, was it not?”

“Would you believe I bought it from a French theatrical company whose _Faust_ had just closed?”

“It is about the only thing I would believe.”

“I had San’Omobono do a bit of work on it, of course.”

“How much did you pay him to not rip out the feathers?”

Holmes chuckled. “You like it?”

I almost frowned. It wasn’t like Holmes to ask a question to which he knew the answer.

“It is handsome,” I said. “Striking. Arresting. Captivating. Yes, I like it very much.”

“All that? Perhaps it has a bit of devil left in it.”

The light in his eyes made me bold. Too bold.

“And perhaps do you, too, Holmes.”

* * *

I didn’t need a card this time.

It might take some imagination to make a hatstand out of a man, but it takes very little to make a table out of one.

Nevertheless, there was a card. It was beside the pipe rack, which was on the rectangle of polished wood strapped to Holmes’s back.

_Dear Watson,_

_I am the table where Crosby the banker met his terrible death. As before, please don’t alter your behaviour. If I am in distress, I shall ring the bell on my finger._

_Yours,_

_Holmes_

I looked at Holmes. He was on hands and knees, next to my armchair, in the black dressing gown, and, sure enough, on the index finger of his right hand, there was a silver ring with a set of four tiny pearl beads attached.

Good.

It was all very well for him to force himself to enter rare mental states to solve puzzles, but I worried that he might push himself too far. He was all brain, of course, and the rest of him mere appendix, of course, but appendices burst, didn’t they?

Of course, they did.

But not on my watch, if I could help it.

I moved the pipe rack to the mantelpiece and put in its place _The Wreck of the Grosvenor_.

Then I sighed an ordinary end-of-a-long-day sigh, fixed myself an ordinary—fine ordinary, not serviceable ordinary, I shan’t bandy the name of Holmes’s liquor, no matter what the parallelism—whiskey and soda, stoked the ordinary hearth fire, sat in my ordinary armchair, and took up my Clark Russell story.

And something caught my eye.

Holmes’s leg. His bare leg.

The side slits of the dressing gown had not been obvious when Holmes was the hatrack, but the swathe of skin on display now, outlined as it was in black silk was…what words had I used?

Striking. Arresting. Captivating.

And telling.

Holmes was nude beneath the dressing gown.

Had he been nude before, when he was hatrack?

I frowned and sipped my whiskey.

As always, I saw but did not observe!

I was observing now.

I couldn’t _not_ observe!

Holmes’s thigh. The back of his knee.

I sipped my whiskey.

He said I could kick him or hit him or spit on him. But none of it was what I had in mind.

I drank and debated silently.

Then I removed my shoes and ran a wool-socked foot up, then down, Holmes’s leg.

I bent down to gauge his expression.

Stoic. Still. Eye closed. Head straight.

I rubbed his leg again with my foot, feeling the undulation of flesh.

Lovely. A lovely, lovely bit of leg.

I bent and checked again.

Holmes was still undisturbed, except…

…for his prick.

Oh, he liked it, did he?

Off with the wool, then!

I removed my socks and applied the side of my bare foot to the same expanse of skin.

I checked a third time.

Goodness!

I wanted to wrap my hand around it, of course, but I was sailing into unchartered territory in more directions than one.

How did one go about frigging a table?

I brought my glass to my lips, pondering the matter when…

_Jingle-jingle-jingle!_

And that was all the warning I had. In one swift, sudden movement, Holmes raised himself to his knees and unlaced the tabletop, thus sending it and _The Wreck of the Grosvenor_ crashing to the floor and me clutching my whiskey like a damsel released from her bonds of distress.

Holmes’s dressing gown parted as he cried,

“A repulsive red leech!”

My gaze was, of course, buried between his legs.

“Oh, no, Holmes! It’s rather magnificent. Bit of a bend to the left—”

“The case, Watson!” snapped Holmes, closing the dressing gown, getting to his feet, and hurrying to his bedroom.

* * *

Holmes and I had almost returned to our usual routine, without saying a single word to one another about ‘the table incident,’ when I arrived late one night to find my armchair gone.

And a Holmes-chair in its place.

He lay on his back, folded in half and secured with a strap. A cushion sat on his thighs and the lower half of his legs were in the air, serving, apparently, as the chairback. His arms were extended, his palms flat to the floor, and the ring with the little bells was again on his finger.

The position looked supremely uncomfortable, not to say dangerous, but Holmes’s face bore its usual impassive expression. And his eyes were closed.

There was a card, of course.

_Dear Watson,_

_I am the chair to which Mister Mortimer was tied when he was forced to sign the document relating to his successor at the shipping company. As before._

_Yours,_

_Holmes_

As before! As if!

It was not ‘as before’ because this time, Holmes was nude!

The black dressing gown lay draped over his armchair.

I poured myself a whiskey, neat, as this was certainly no time for effervescence.

I circled Holmes, studying him. He had nice feet, nice legs, nice arms, and, apparently, the flexibility of a circus performer.

I felt a bit like a circus performer myself, specifically the elephant, when I made to sit down on the cushion.

Slowly, slowly, slowly.

Until finally, I was resting my full weight on him.

I gulped the whiskey, set the glass on the table that was, in fact, mercifully, a table, and allowed a host of wicked thoughts dance through my mind.

Getting to my knees. Teasing Holmes’s hole with slicked fingers. Lowering myself even further, like a dog or a serpent, to tongue him. Sinking my cock into him. Thrusting. Spending myself and watching my seed trickle out. Lapping it up, once more, dog-like, serpentine.

Essentially—if one wants to be quite crude, and we are at that point in the story, aren’t we?—sodding the chair.

I stood abruptly and strode towards the fire, freed my erection, and replaying my earlier fantasy, stroked myself to crisis with a spit-slicked hand.

My emissions hissed as they hit the flames.

When I had set myself to rights and turned, I started.

Holmes stood before me, wrapped in the dressing gown.

“Uh, you figured out how Smith forced Mortimer to turn the company over to him?” I asked.

“Four hours ago,” he replied with a smirk.

“Holmes!”

“Watson.”

“Are you all right?”

“Quite. You?”

“Yes. Fancy another go at this…?”

Words failed, so I waved in the direction of where my armchair used to be.

Holmes smiled, and his brow crinkled in a most charming, Raven-of-the-Tower, devil-may-bargain manner.

“Have you need of an additional mattress, Watson?”

“Hmm. And perhaps a valet stand, first.”

“Lead on,” he said, taking my proffered arm. “After all, I’m here to be used.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
